After the injury of Shubman Gill, the Indian team management is looking to add two more openers Prithvi Shaw and Devdutt Padikkal in England. For this, the Administrative Manager of Team India also wrote an email to Chief Selector Chetan Sharma on 28 June. Although Chetan did not take cognizance of that but the question arises that why the team management suddenly needed two more openers despite having Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, KL Rahul and Abhimanyu Easwaran.
A source said that the team management will open the pair of Rohit Sharma and Mayank Agarwal in the opening matches of the five-match series against England but if either of them does not succeed or gets injured, then the team will have Rahul and Easwaran. As two options are left. Rahul has told the team management that he does not want to open in front of the red ball. Virat also does not want to take the risk by taking his favorite in the opening because if his performance is poor then it will affect his career. At the same time, the team management is not very optimistic about Easwaran playing for Bengal.
They feel that Easwaran will not prove to be very successful in English conditions. Apart from this, someone has also scolded the team management that Chetan Sharma (when he was not the chief selector) used to go to Easwaran’s father’s Abhimanyu Academy in Uttarakhand for training. There is nothing wrong with that though. Dainik Jagran has also come to know that Virat also tried to call one or two people associated with cricket to find out how much truth is there in this?
It is known that a BCCI source said, ‘Shubman Gill has been ruled out of the entire tour of England due to injury. It will take at least three months for them to get fit. Last month, the team’s administrative manager sent a letter to former pacer Chetan Sharma asking him to send two other openers to the UK. Despite knowing the status of Gill’s injury, it is believed that Sharma did not pay much attention to the request of the team management. It remains to be seen whether the team management makes a formal request to BCCI President Sourav Ganguly and Secretary Jay Shah to send Sha and Padikkal. Both these batsmen are currently in Sri Lanka for the limited overs series.